


Prometheus

by chaos_harmony



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-14
Updated: 2012-03-14
Packaged: 2017-11-01 22:30:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/361986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaos_harmony/pseuds/chaos_harmony
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“If I step off the path, shoot and kill me with those hands.” Wartime in Ishbal, and the origins of that particular promise.  Alludes to some spoilers for Roy and Riza’s (manga-verse/Brotherhood-verse) backstory.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prometheus

Hawkeye gifts Mustang with the secrets of fire.

Later, the Flame Alchemist kills a man. It will not be his first.

*

Riza dreams:

_He is thirteen, and newly arrived to her father’s house. He is dark-haired and dark-eyed and earnest in the way of boys his age. Her father thinks, grudgingly, that the boy may make a good alchemist._

_His name is Roy Mustang. Riza thinks, quietly, that it might be nice to have a friend her own age to play with._

*

She knows, in theory, that men must kill and be killed on the battlefield. The concept is more difficult in practice: to fire bullets into human targets, to watch the final moments of a human life through sniper’s eyes like a distant god of death.

(To have seen the cohort of her childhood use her father’s work, and then to smell cooked flesh long after the smoke has cleared.)

At day’s end, Hawkeye closes her eyes, dreams of making monsters, and prays in vain to wake.

*

Riza dreams:

_Her father’s apprentice has become something of a fixture in their household. He’s still too othered for her to think of him as a brother, precisely, but he fills a third seat at the dinner table that almost makes them feel like a real family. He’s a little older now, but so is she, and they’re both at an age where she’s beginning to notice him in the way young women notice young men. Used to his presence in her father’s house, she accepts his height and broadened shoulders without self-consciousness._

_Sometimes, though, she catches sight of his eyes or lips or collarbones, and remembers that he is handsome. The realization always manages to surprise her a little, a sensation that startles heat into her cheeks. Then he grins and says something audacious, and she kicks him lightly under the table, and her father tells them both to behave themselves._

_He is the boy who lives in her family’s care, and so she cares for him. It’s simple._

*

The test:

“Sir.”

“Hawkeye.”

She almost falters at her father’s name, but almosts have never governed her. She has a perfect shot, and a soldier’s survival instinct has taught her to be grateful for those.

He smiles at her over the gun she’s aiming at him, familiar like a well-worn blanket, now frayed at the edges, and somehow sad. “I have the advantage,” Roy reminds her gently, gloved hand outstretched.

“Then kill me before I pull this trigger,” she replies evenly, her own expression impassive. A snap of the fingers. She’s seen him do it now. It would be quick. A good death, if there is such a thing.

The side of his mouth quirks. “Somehow, I don’t think your father would approve of that.” He makes a quick motion with his hands, but she hears no telltale snap.

The gloves rest untouched at his feet like fallen doves, as he stares down the barrel of her gun. And this too is simple.

*

Hawkeye remembers:

_When she’s sixteen, her father allows her to accompany Roy on one of the boy’s grueling errands for the first time. What her father doesn’t know is that she hasn’t fully recovered from a recent sprained ankle, but sixteen is sixteen, and Riza, eager to get out of the house for once, refrains from mentioning the phantom soreness in her left leg._

_This turns out to be a mistake._

_“This is degrading,” she announces flatly when Roy hoists her on to his back. They’re lost, hungry, parched, and certainly not returning to the Hawkeye residence by nightfall, but she’s more irritated with herself than anyone else._

_“Cheer up,” Roy pants. “The sun’s going down soon, at least.”_

_She sighs and tightens her legs around his waist, resigned. “I don’t suppose you’ve got any idea how we’ll find our way back, do you?” It’s more a statement than a question, but her head remains stubbornly upright, and she stares straight ahead at the expanse of unfamiliar territory before them, unafraid._

*

What Riza knows to be true:

That war has made killers of them both.

That their nation is one that needs saving.

That good men are a rarity.

That Roy Mustang remains, against all odds, the best of what good men she knows.

That in the end, they wake not to the one-note song of a fired bullet, but to the muffled clatter of her gun against his abandoned gloves.

(And in the end, who passed whose test?)

*

_“Tomorrow,” he laughs like a promise, her weight on his back, “tomorrow, somehow, we’ll go home.”_


End file.
